PITTSBURGH -- The velocity with which Tarik Skubal fired his glove off the dugout wall might have rivaled his hardest fastball during the 28-pitch opening inning that preceded his rare flash of anger Monday afternoon at PNC Park. It was an emotion that continued in the Tigers’ 6-3 loss to the Pirates.

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This was a game for the Tigers to take, and they nearly did, rallying ahead with a three-run sixth inning. But allowing a four-run seventh inning to a struggling Pirates squad, built around three singles and two walks, cost Detroit a chance to build on the momentum from its weekend series in Cincinnati.

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The Tigers had flown in from Cincinnati for a road series that began with a day game, then began the day with a short-handed bullpen and coaching staff due to COVID-19 tests and contact tracing. But for manager A.J. Hinch, it was no excuse.

“I’m not going to sit here and talk about our day,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “They beat us, and won the big moments of the game. That’s the story.”

Like fellow rookie hurler and good friend Casey Mize, Skubal knows his innings are limited for the stretch run. And Monday’s first frame against the Pirates was a rough one, from Kevin Newman’s two-run homer to the Yoshi Tsutusgo comebacker Skubal took off his right wrist with an ill-advised attempt at a behind-the-back catch.

Newman had squared to bunt on the pitch before the homer, only to bunt foul. Instead of advancing Ke’Bryan Hayes, he drove him in.

“It’s just unfortunate that the one pitch I got beat on, I just left it a little bit too middle,” Skubal said. “I wanted to go up and in there with a sinker, and I didn’t quite get there. Later in the game, I did exactly what I wanted to, and I got two punchouts on that pitch.”

Skubal yielded hits to four of Pittsburgh’s first five batters, then retired the final eight Pirates he faced, striking out four of them. It was an example of Skubal’s progress with making adjustments in the middle of an inning.

“They were swinging pretty early,” Hinch said. “He got some early outs and finished his outing on a high note.”

Skubal has given up a .308 average and a .958 OPS in the first inning of his starts this season. The OPS is his highest of any inning where he has had at least 20 at-bats, while only the fifth inning has seen a higher average, at .319.

“I need to be better in the first regardless,” Skubal said. “It doesn’t matter if [the start is] three innings or six innings or seven innings. The first inning is kind of where the damage has been done all year along. I’ve talked to [pitching coaches Juan Nieves and Chris Fetter] about it already. Maybe it’s just a little bit of a mentality thing, not trying to find a feel and just go attack guys in the first inning. So there’s a bunch of different things that I can take away from this game.”

Six innings later, Skubal’s Minor League teammate Kyle Funkhouser saw his outing go the opposite direction. With the Tigers' bullpen short on Monday, Funkhouser earned a second inning of relief by retiring the middle of the Pirates' lineup in order in the sixth to protect a 3-2 lead built on Niko Goodrum's two-run double and Miguel Cabrera’s pinch-hit sacrifice fly. Funkhouser stayed on for the seventh with the bottom of the order due up.

Two walks, a single and a balk later, Funkhouser faced a bases-loaded, no-out jam with the lineup turned over. Hayes sent Funkhouser’s next pitch through the right side for a go-ahead two-run single. Tsutsugo’s two-out single tacked on two more runs.

Funkhouser, the breakout reliever of Detroit’s bullpen this season, allowed four runs on three hits with two walks and a strikeout. It marked his roughest outing damage-wise since July 24, and just his fourth two-walk outing in 46 appearances this season.

It was also the second consecutive outing in which Funkhouser has given up multiple runs after finishing one inning and starting the next. He inherited a fourth-inning threat that he ended with one pitch last Friday in Cincinnati, then gave up a Jonathan India two-run homer as part of a three-hit fifth inning before preventing further damage with back-to-back strikeouts of Joey Votto and Eugenio Suárez.

Funkhouser has given up just six earned runs in 20 innings over his past 18 outings since July 27. Five of those runs have scored in his second inning of work.

“That inning started to spiral a little bit, and obviously we’d like him to execute pitches,” Hinch said. “I mean, walks are killer in close games.”